outpost in Afghanistan that killed multiple CIA officers, prompting an unnamed official to tell The Guardian, “This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations.” Many were cross-border drone strikes targeting the Taliban. The following year, a significant escalation in the drone war occurred not because “this technology really began to take off,” to repeat Obama’s construction, which seems to assign responsibility for targeted killings to drones themselves, but in part because of a deliberate response to a suicide attack on a U.S. By the end of 2009 the CIA had already conducted its 100th drone strike in Pakistan. The strike missed its target, and Newsweek reported that Obama was made aware almost immediately that innocents died in the attack. President Obama presided over a drone strike for the first time shortly after taking office, on January 22, 2009. Shortly before Obama took office, leaving his job as a United States senator, a CIA drone strike on a funeral in Pakistan killed as many as 41 civilians, an incident that apparently wasn’t enough to cause him to rethink the wisdom of the U.S. That narrative gets at least one thing right: The Obama administration’s approach to drone killings was much worse early on than after his concerted efforts to reform it. And so we initiated this big process to try to get it in a box, and checks and balances, and much higher standards about when they’re used.” “And it wasn’t until about a year, year and a half in where I began to realize that the Pentagon and our national-security apparatus and the CIA were all getting too comfortable with the technology as a tool to fight terrorism, and not being mindful enough about how that technology is being used and the dangers of a form of warfare that is so detached from what is actually happening on the ground. “The truth is that this technology really began to take off right at the beginning of my presidency,” he began. That’s when he brought up critics of lethal drone strikes. “Sometimes it’s useful for activists just to be out there to keep you mindful and not get complacent,” the president concluded, “even if ultimately you think some of their criticism is misguided.” Obama had already spoken about the strengths and weaknesses of Black Lives Matter, LGBT activists, and activists objecting to the deportation of undocumented immigrants, remarks I suggest reading in full. When my colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates interviewed President Obama for his recent article, “ My President Was Black,” the discussion briefly turned to lethal drone strikes.
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